


Beautiful Sleaze

by Pfain Ryder (Cat_Moon)



Category: Quantum Leap
Genre: Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-05-20 06:16:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19371094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cat_Moon/pseuds/Pfain%20Ryder
Summary: Another look at the consequences of leaping through time.





	Beautiful Sleaze

**Author's Note:**

> Another 'what if?' This one is a bit different from my usual take on Sam/Al, because for the record I do have a hard time seeing this situation actually happen. I don't really think badly of Sam, honestly, I just love torturing him. ;)
> 
> Published in “Leap In The Dark”. 1993

 

I lay on the bed, eyes closed, pretending to be asleep. I could hear the sound of Al moving around the room, dressing. The bed was by the window in a patch of sunlight, warming my bones with its rays. I was quite content to stretch the time, drifting in a pleasant languidness.

 

We'd been working late the night before, pouring over the plans for the Imaging Chamber. Sitting there on the floor in the midst of construction, giddy from lack of sleep, singing 'The Impossible Dream'. One thing led to another, as they say...

 

It happened that way sometimes. Most of the time, actually. I mean, it's not like we planned it ahead of time or anything. That would be...I don't know, sordid.

 

No. It would be like admitting we were having an...affair. Something special and beautiful reduced to sleazy and cheap. Besides, it wasn't true. He had Tina, I was married. This was just something different, aside from life.

 

After all, we shared a special dream, one no one else could understand. It talked only to us, whispering the promise of a grand adventure. Sometimes you just had to be with someone who was on the same wavelength.

 

Things were casual, easy. Nothing we couldn't handle. Sometimes I thought maybe it happened when the affection between us would build and build until it needed to be dissipated. But now I sounded too scientific.

 

So if we weren't sleazy or scientific, what were we?

 

Footsteps stopped by the bed. "I know you're really awake," his voice said.

 

I opened my eyes. "How do you know?" He was standing there smiling down at me. His shirt was still unbuttoned, pants unzipped. A surge of some emotion I couldn't name washed over me, constricting my heart.

 

"Simple, I know you inside and out."

 

"You can say that again." I smiled lazily, wondering if, just this once, I could tempt him into one for the road. It wasn't part of the game; once the night was over, the light of day always brought a return to normalcy.

 

"We're gonna be late, if you don't haul it," he informed me.

 

I stretched sensuously, managing to unobtrusively slide the sheet off my body as I began. "It's our Project, we can be late if we want to be."

 

His eyes watched my body, trying to pretend they weren't. The silence grew for a few moments. He stood there uncertainly. What I was proposing wasn't allowed, not in the rules. We had no map here.

 

And where would it lead?

 

"You're right," I said abruptly, jumping out of the bed. "I've got to go over those computations with Gooshie this morning, you know how hard he is to track down these days."

 

Al chuckled mildly.

 

"I'm gonna take a shower, I won't be long. Want to grab a quick breakfast on the way?" I asked as I headed for the bathroom.

 

"Yeah, the motel coffee shop has decent food."

 

And life was right-side up again. Daylight, no shadows here to mar the light.

 

I stepped into the shower, turning the water on and regulating it somewhere between cool and luke warm. Satisfied it was to my utmost comfort, I picked up the bar of soap.

 

The sound of the shower curtain being opened was the first thing I noticed. The second was the pair of naked arms that slid around me. I responded immediately, my body yearning for more of his touch. I leaned back into him. His lips found that certain spot on my neck and my head went back automatically. The spray of water beat down on my skin, his tongue lapped at my neck, and it was all too much for me. Another first, you might have gathered. We were strictly traditional bed.

 

"God, Al..." I moaned. I turned in his arms, capturing his mouth with mine, hands trying to mold his body into mine. I was backed against the tile wall, its coolness making me shiver. Cool wall, tepid water, warm mouth, hot body demanding something from mine it was only too happy to give. I was on a speeding sensory overload, reality was a tiny shower stall in a cheap motel. And Al.

 

The day was gone, the night back to welcome us. I wanted more in that moment than I could ever put words to.

 

"I..." _I love you._ I bit down on my words, tasting a slight tang of blood. Tears stung my eyes, were washed away with the water to disappear down the drain with the other traces of our loving.

 

Our bodies rejoiced in each other, climbing together to the top of the mountain. It was a big drop from there.

 

But I didn't care.

 

*** * * * * ***

 

Why didn't I tell him?

 

I've asked myself that question only recently, but it keeps repeating in my mind like a record that's stuck.

 

Why?

 

I made the most intense, passionate love I've ever made in a shower in my life, that morning.

 

The memory is a funny thing. I woke up this morning as usual, disoriented and fuzzy on what leap I was in. Got up to take a cold shower to relieve the sweltering heat of an August in Florida, and stepped into the tiny shower stall of my host's mobile home.

 

Suddenly I was in another shower stall.

 

Those old days of wanting, back all over again. Why didn't I tell him how I really felt? For the same reason I suspect he held out on me. Complications. Hell of a thing to call a wife, isn't it? A complication. Especially for someone who's existence was just now re-confirmed, at least in my universe. Funny way to remember you're married, by recalling a steamy scene between you and your best friend in a shower stall.

 

Now there was a new complication. Should have stuck with the old one, that would have been a hell of a lot easier to get rid of... but being separated by years, denied touch, makes a person realize what doesn't matter and what does.

 

What really matters.

 

I haven't done much on the leap yet today, mostly been sitting here, thinking. I know I'll have to get on it soon. Have to get out of the shower soon, too, before I turn into a prune. This old guy is wrinkled enough as it is.

 

There it is, that familiar noise I've come to hate. The doorway from nowhere, to nowhere.

 

"Sam?" Al's voice, puzzled.

 

He's probably got that perplexed look on his face. Since I know, I don't have to look.

 

"Sam--are you all right? What are you doing sitting on the floor of that shower stall?"

 

I found I could raise my eyes, meet his.

 

"I love you, Al."

 

 

**the end**

4/30/92

 

 


End file.
